Aboard the Democracy Train (5 page)

“
Shaheed ki Baitee – Benazir
” (Daughter of the Martyr – Benazir)

“
Ab Aai Aai –Benazir
” (Now She’s Coming, Coming – Benazir)

As we reached the rally site, the party workers hoisted me – the only other female on the scene – onto a makeshift stage. To my surprise, I found myself sitting next to Benazir. Evidently astonished to see me in the middle of nowhere, she turned to me and said: “You’re very brave, Nafisa.”

There was a sheer determination in Benazir as she traveled day in, day out to mobilize humongous crowds. Having lost her illustrious father to Gen. Zia less than a decade ago, she had dried her tears and appeared to be filled with a grim determination to step in her father’s shoes. The humiliating way in which Gen. Zia’s regime had treated her only hardened her resolve to lead PPP workers who had suffered long years of imprisonment under Zia.

In my interviews with Benazir, she vowed to take the nation out of the dark ages and transform it into a modern industrialized state. Even if this was rhetoric – as I sometimes suspected – it lifted my spirits to think that a modern, educated woman was ready to lead a nation in which women were largely poor, pregnant and powerless.

Moreover, as a woman from a cultured background, Benazir had a gentility that was missing from the seasoned male players who dominated Pakistan’s politics. If I had any doubts about her regal airs, these were quieted by thoughts that the nation needed
a woman with the arrogance of the feudal class to cut through the entrenched power of the military and the bureaucracy.

Figure 2
Benazir Bhutto in her ancestral home town of Larkana, Sindh (Photograph courtesy of Dr Shafqat Soomro).

The mid-air explosion of the C-130 plane which killed Gen. Zia ul Haq and the top military brass in Pakistan was a turning point in my life. It was also the start of a new chapter in the lives of millions of Pakistanis. The military went ahead with its scheduled plan to hold elections, albeit without the old dictator.

For Benazir Bhutto – whose enormous political rallies had become the biggest challenge to Gen. Zia – the moment had arrived.

Evidently, for my editor, it was also a time to make some changes. Like Benazir, I was a young woman newly returned from the West and determined to see a better future for my nation. Sensing my enthusiasm for a woman prime minister, the editor of my newspaper bypassed senior male reporters and nominated me, the only female reporter at
Dawn,
to cover Benazir Bhutto.

In October 1988, I became one of four journalists to ride for a day with Benazir and her PPP entourage aboard the “Democracy Train.” It was the start of her party’s campaign in interior Sindh to mobilize millions of voters for the national elections announced after Gen. Zia’s death. Just one day on the train was enough to suffuse my senses with the enormity of the welcome Benazir received from the dispossessed people of the province.

As we traveled through the dry, hot desert terrain of Sindh – which spreads north of Karachi to India’s border – I got a bird’s eye view of a region in which nothing has moved for centuries.

The British colonial explorers, who set foot in Sindh in 1843, described the Sindhi peasantry as the “wretched of the earth.” The twenty-first century has not brought them relief. Today, peasants still live in mud houses in dry, dusty wastelands, without electricity, clean drinking water or roads. They tend the farm lands of big feudal lords for meager wages and live with archaic social customs and customary laws that degrade women.

As the train draped in red, black and green PPP flags sped through the Sindh desert, I peeked out of the window to see barefoot peasants and children run alongside the tracks.

They mobbed the platforms. Young men and boys fought over each other’s heads to catch a glimpse of Benazir’s tall silhouette. They had heard that she had come back to fulfill her father’s mission of “
Roti, Kapra aur Makaan
” (Food, Clothing and Shelter) for the millions of landless poor.

My male colleagues, all upcoming journalists – Zafar Abbas, Abbas Nasir and Ibrahim Sajid – and I traveled in a glass compartment, especially reserved for the press. We were ambitious and looked for scoops on this turning point in Pakistan’s history.
Armed with typewriters and tape-recorders, we were poised to tell the world how Pakistan’s first woman candidate for prime minister was received by the masses.

At the platform stops, the Sindhi villagers greeted Benazir Bhutto with unadulterated joy. Welcoming villagers beat large drums strapped across their shoulders to frenzy and spun like
dervishes
on the railway platform. They chanted “
Marvi, Malir Ji
–
Benazir, Benazir
,” likening Benazir’s image to that of a beloved Sindhi heroine whose love for her people is painted in traditional folklore by the Sindhi mystic poet, Shah Latif Bhitai.

The atmosphere rang with joy as PPP activists from Karachi got out from the train to clap and dance to the tune of Urdu slogans:

“
Ab Aai, Aai Benazir
” (Now she’s coming, coming – Benazir)

“
Wazir-i-Azam Benazir
” (Prime Minister Benazir)

Many of Benazir’s PPP workers were Mohajirs who seemed not to mind that they were campaigning for a woman prime minister who drew her strength mainly from interior Sindh. This, notwithstanding that Mohajirs had joined the ethnocentric political party Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) in great numbers.

Inside the moving train, Benazir made her way through the crush of PPP bodies to stand at the doorway. Her party workers created a bubble around her to separate her from her fans.

Standing behind the tall, slender and stately young woman, I saw Benazir’s pink complexion turn red with effort as she bellowed into the loudspeaker in the apparently unfamiliar language of Urdu – the lingua franca of Pakistan – and the even more unfamiliar Sindhi – the language of Sindh.

Focusing on the sea of upturned faces on the platform she cried into the loudspeaker: “The dark days of dictatorship are over; we have come to bring you democracy.” Although she mixed the past and present tense, no one seemed to care.

Indeed, Benazir’s election campaign in the dusty wastelands of Sindh was a far cry from the oratory skills she had polished as president of the Oxford Debating Society. Although a fluent English speaker, she struggled with the indigenous languages – Urdu and Sindhi – in which she had never been formally trained.

But people had come to hear the mood of the message, which, after years of dictatorship under Gen. Zia, fell like rain on parched earth. As the scion of the most politically important feudal family of Sindh and daughter of an executed prime minister, Benazir carried huge symbolic presence.

Benazir wasn’t the first politician to be cheered on fare value alone. After all, people had cheered the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah as he addressed crowds in impeccable English, without understanding a word of what he said.

As Benazir spoke, thousands of peasants – whose women-folk gathered separately, wearing billowing
chadors
(veils) and clutching their waving children – broke into cheers that reverberated into the hot, arid Sindh desert.

Flushed with the success of her tumultuous reception, Benazir joined us in the press compartment of the “Democracy Train” to unfold her ambitious plans for change. We welcomed her as she made her unscheduled appearance in the journalists’ compartment.

“Come and sit next to me, Nafisa,” she said, patting the seat next to her. Her hand tugged her
dupatta
more tightly over escaping strands of hair.

I moved gladly and sat next to her. In Pakistan’s segregated society, being the only woman journalist to accompany Benazir had given me privileges that my male colleagues could only envy. My admiration and support for the enormous challenges that Benazir faced were written all over my face. It was not lost on her. Her light complexion glowed, reflecting an inner determination to overcome all hurdles to power.

As the “Democracy Train” charged through the hills and plains of the Sindh desert, Benazir unraveled the PPP manifesto to bring Pakistan into the comity of modern states. Her party planned to set up schools and colleges in rural areas to bring literacy and education to the poor of Pakistan and industrialize the primarily agrarian nation to create new jobs and bring women into the fold of daily life.

My sixth sense told me that Pakistan’s extraordinarily complex problems demanded special measures for which Benazir’s
experience might prove to be woefully inadequate. Unlike the nation’s seasoned male politicians who could move freely, being a woman was bound to handicap Benazir in Pakistan’s masculine society.

And yet, Gen. Zia’s sudden plane crash had opened the nation to all sorts of possibilities. Exhilarated by my experience on board the “Democracy Train,” I sent back the dispatch on a woman who planned to defeat all odds and change the destiny of the nation.

Not only did Benazir come across as a dynamic leader, she was also the daughter of the prime minister who had introduced sweeping land reforms in 1973 – setting a ceiling for ownership.

Later in my journalistic career, I learnt how the Bhuttos had, themselves, evaded land reform. Big feudal landowners cleverly transferred land in the names of unmarried and widowed sisters and even dead peasants to avoid the ceiling. Apparently, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had winked at feudals, including his own family members, as they transferred land within the family. Back then, Benazir all too skillfully avoided using the term “reform”, even as her party pledged to bring justice to the people.

As evening fell, my three colleagues and I got off the “Democracy Train” at a remote train station in interior Sindh. We had seen enough and wanted to get back to Karachi to file our reports. While we waited for transport to take us back to the city, I pulled out my small typewriter and typed out the report for my newspaper.

Suddenly, we were surrounded by scores of young men. There I was, a young unveiled woman typing in the boondocks. I began to attract crowds of villagers whose circle grew bigger as they watched me with curious eyes.

“What is she doing?” my colleague overheard a young man inquire.

“She’s typing a job application,” another youth replied in seriousness.

“Why is she here?” another villager was heard asking.

The reply – which made us crack up when my colleague told us later: “Benazir has left her for our welfare.”

My coverage of Benazir’s election campaign took me for the first time into interior Sindh, and opened up a new world.

It was a vivid experience traveling up north from Karachi into miles of dusty terrain where the Indus River irrigates patches of cultivated green. Wearing only thin flowing head covers, peasant women dot the landscape. Driving by, one saw them harvest and drop the produce in satchels tied to their waists. They worked knee-deep in the paddy fields, took animals for grazing and cooked on firewood in front of dark mud huts.

On my travels in interior Sindh, I wore a loose
shalwar kameez
without the enveloping
dupatta.
Even so – and despite traveling unaccompanied to cover the story – I found the common Sindhi folks immensely welcoming.

Their liberal, easygoing Sufi approach was in sharp contrast to the conservative Islamic middle class of Karachi. For the Sindhi peasants – and even landowners – I was not just a woman but also a privileged journalist who could convey the deprivations of a province that lay in darkness.

Once, as I visited interior Sindh in winter – wearing a blue blazer over my
shalwar kameez
, hands in my pocket and looking obviously very urban – a villager asked me in Urdu: “Are you
Angrez
?” – the term used for a European.

I laughed and replied “No” in Urdu.

Like me, who frequently visited the US, many English-speaking urban Pakistanis who lived in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad were more comfortable wearing Western clothes. But while urban men wore Western clothes, even in some rural parts of the country, women from the city were expected to dress more traditionally.

Still, I wore what made me most comfortable. For me, my own class background – born and raised in Karachi and educated in the West – as well as my profession as a journalist, allowed me the luxury of distancing myself from customary rural traditions and examine village life much as an anthropologist.

In hindsight, I see that this is the manner in which the British explorers acted when they first set foot in Sindh to pave the way for colonization. That there was life in the dusty villages of Sindh north of Karachi had, for me, been no less dramatic than the announcement by the British colonialist, Charles Napier in 1843, that he had conquered the Indian province of Sindh. The British pronounced it Sind.

That was evidently the basis for the Latin pun, telegrammed by Napier to London when he arrived in my province: “
Peccavi
– I have sinned.”

Of course, I was no conqueror but rather an urban journalist who had stumbled into the darkness of her own back yard. I had grown passionately involved in explaining rural Sindh to my English-educated, city-based readers.